National Cultural Festival turns out to be a red carpet mela for VVIP's only

The people's mela began as a festival of the people, by the people but not for the people. The National Cultural Festival was a red carpet mela for the VVIP's only. They sat on the ramparts of the Red Fort, in rows behind the prime minister, and looked down upon the stage to be entertained by the kaleidoscope of Indian culture. And the people, 4,500 of them, performed before their prime minister.

Instead of a prime ministerial durbar, it should have been a people's durbar. But those on the ground below - ordinary VIP's, the Janata and the press - could see nothing, not even the prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi came out of a security-imposed darkness for a precise minute to register his presence before being sucked back into the security cocoon once again.

Balancing trick Born Rajasthan

The only thing the people could see for a long long time was a hesitant hot air balloon named Indradhanush, and M.F. Husain high on a stage making an instant pop Hanuman with a dinosaur-like head, a tiger, and a jungle with his French two-foot brush- to the accompaniment of a syrupy voice calling him "Bharat ka ladla " who "was not pouring paint but his life onto the canvas". Phula, who had brought her two children five hours earlier and waited in the dusty dark without food or water, could not hide her disappointment: this was not a "mela"; it was a "festival, a national festival". And a lathi-happy police kept herding people back into the enclosure.

Colourfully clad folk dancers and drummers

There couldn't have been a worse start to the three-week National Cultural Festival; nor such a misleading one. For, on the following days the festival did metamorphose into a mela in some of the seven mukhya (main) sites. Red Fort, of course, did not change its character. The stages were too distant, the audience indifferent. The policeman on duty could not hide his disdain for the crowds: "Fifty per cent of these are pocketmaars (pickpockets); they have spent Rs 56 lakh on the lighting and Rs 4 lakh on the stage which was taken away after the inauguration...In a few days nobody will come here." Clearly, the mela was not for him.

backstage view of a wooden horse

But in Shahdara, Jheel, Nangloi, Chiragh Dilli, the lawns of Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium and Shastri Nagar, the festival finally met the people. Spontaneity bubbled. Performers would break into dance at the drop of a request. The children of Chiragh Dilli, barefoot and shivering in their thin torn shirts, watched entranced as Bharatnatyam dancers performed. When the folk dancers from Mizoram thundered across the stage with their spears in Nangloi, open-mouthed young men wondered if the dancers from the North-east were "really Indians". And when the Sikhs broke into bhangra on stage or fenced with deadly-looking swords in the middle of the crowd, the ice was broken. The public joined in- as if the continuing long night of Punjab was for a moment just a bad dream.

Sarangi player enthralls an appreciative audienc

National integration or bust is the theme song of the organisers all right. Behind the burst of festivity lies a deep fear, hysteria almost, about the holding together of the country. The message has reached the performers: the magicians in Connaught Place's Central Park seemed to have been inspired by the Directorate of Audio-Visual Publicity. Sagar, the magician from Punjab, put three handkerchiefs of different colours into a tube and magically swished out one large handkerchief with the same colours merging across it diagonally: "If we were one like this, nobody could break India." His broken fan which could provide no breeze repeated the same message. And Karuna Sarkar, the Bengali magician, kept breaking into Punjabi and calling young Sikhs to the stage, jesting with them all the while about their chhola bhaturas and zest for life.

national unity through a magician's sleight of hand

Rajiv Gandhi says he wants a festival of India for India. If the Parisians could dance in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower and almost eat the leaf plates, why could the Indians not dance on the lawns of the Red Fort and eat dhokla? Rajeev Sethi, the director-general of the festival, wants to take culture to the galis and have the people meet their roots. The prime minister's aide, Mani Shanker Aiyar, says the intention is to divert the lumpens from the cinema to folk arts, from the kind of consumerism which can lead to dowry deaths to culture with a small c, from soul-less vagrancy to soul in some form.

The lumpens, it was apparent, were certainly out in large, conspicuous numbers. Smack-glazed eyes flickered with an occasional glimmer of interest at the goings-on in the maidans. Even in Trilokpuri and Shakarpur: two localities where two years ago some of those present among the audience may have killed without remorse during Delhi's darkest days.

A veritable VIP mela

Something did seem to be happening in this arranged rendezvous between village and city and villager and citywallah. Aditi Mehta, the director of the western cultural zone recounted a moving incident: "A young man who looked like a real goonda, somebody I would be afraid to talk to, kept returning to the exhibition of Rajasthani utensils. He desperately wanted to buy three of them. When I asked him why he wanted to, he said that they reminded him of his grandmother, of something he had lost."

The idea of starting a "lost and found department of culture" is basically a good one, but at what cost-and why in such a great hurry? For many in the remote corners of Delhi, the mela was one big window-shopping spree of culture and cultural commodities. The cheapest terracotta Ganesh's, so lovingly gazed upon by the people in Shahdara, were Rs 10 or Rs 15; the mirrored skirts Rs 400, the regional food still out of reach. The organisation was far from perfect.

Performers and people in Shahdara

Each zone spends two days at a particular site, but it takes well over a day to prop up the show each time, much of the delicate ware breaking in transit. In fact, Dastakar, a cooperative of craftsmen from all over the country withdrew from the festival because there were no arrangements for them. The hundred craftsmen will hold a sort of salon de refuse on their own.

Kala Nagri where the artists are staying is like a vast scouts camp but getting to know each other is not the theme song. The performers have been confined to their own zones: performing for the city of Delhi and not for each other-a point which invited complaints from some of the performers. And the organisers perhaps did not reckon with the cold, Rs 20,000 has already been spent on medicines.

Morning ablutions at Kala Nagri

The festival is certainly sprouting little happenings. But the price is too high. The same could have been done with a lot less money and more careful planning. It almost seems as if the Government has suddenly found a limitless reservoir of money to fund this Asiad of culture. But in the end, will this three-week happening end up like a tornado, leaving behind only a trail of expensive colourful debris?

Do You Like This Story? Awesome! Now share the story Too bad. Tell us what you didn't like in the comments